9 The Crito

Meanwhile I hope that none of you will think any the worse of me if after having hitherto passed as a lover of my country, I now actively join its worst enemies in attacking it, or will suspect what I say as the fruit of an outlaw’s enthusiasm. I am an outlaw from the iniquity of those who drove me forth, not, if you will be guided by me, from your service: my worst enemies are not you who only harmed your foes, but they who forced their friends to become enemies; and love of country is what I do not feel when I am wronged, but what I felt when secure in my rights as a citizen. Indeed I do not consider that I am now attacking a country that is still mine; I am rather trying to recover one that is mine no longer; and the true lover of his country is not he who consents to lose it unjustly rather than attack it, but he who longs for it so much that he will go all lengths to recover it.
-Alcibiades to the Spartans (Thucydides 6.92, Tr. Crawley)

As Socrates, condemned to death, awaits his execution, his friend old Crito comes to see him. The tale is brief: Crito beseeches Socrates to escape and Socrates refuses. Plato’s audience will of course have been familiar with the trial and execution of Socrates. Without this aware­ ness the play has little meaning; every line must be read with the full knowledge that Crito did not succeed in persuading Socrates to escape: we cannot hope for a happy ending when we know the historical reality. The drama here comes in two ways: first, we want to see how. Socrates will answer the arguments of Crito; second, we are eager to see how the situation and the proffered escape will affect Socrates’ demeanor.

Crito presents the various arguments why Socrates should escape: it is easy to bribe the guards; he will be welcome with Crito’s friends in Thessaly; it would be wrong to abandon his life and his children; he is choosing the easy way of death rather than the hard way of life; people will think his friends either stingy or cowards; and, if he delays, it will be too late to change his mind. Clearly Crito has thought hard about his arguments before coming to see Socrates.

Socrates is not impressed. It is important, he argues, to consider only whether it is right to escape, right in the opinion of the wise, not of the many. Wrong should never be requited with wrong, injustice with injustice. The honorable thing is not avoiding death but wrong­ doing, and moreover, the many cannot harm one who is good.^[1] Finally, having won Crito’s agreement on these various points, Socrates con­ siders whether he would be injuring the laws by escaping, and the last third of the dialogue consists of Socrates’ imaginary argument with the Laws of Athens. The Laws persuade him that since they nurtured him, gave him every opportunity to change them, or failing that, to leave Athens, he ought to obey them. If not, their brothers, the Laws of the Hades, will not receive him well. Socrates says he is convinced by these arguments. They ring loudly in his ears, like the flutes of the worshippers of Cybele, and he can’t hear other arguments. He is still willing to consider the matter further if Crito wishes, however. Crito has nothing to add, and the dialogue ends as Socrates calls the god their guide.

From a dramatic point of view, I think the dialogue accomplishes two purposes: first, it defends Socrates against the charges of having influenced Alcibiades and thus of having corrupted the most notorious youth of his day; second, and more important, it shows the supremacy of argument as the guiding principle of Socrates’ life.

This chapter begins with the words of Alcibiades to the Spartans after he escaped from the envoys taking him to Athens to stand trial for the profanation of the Herms.^[2] There could not be a starker contrast between the behavior of Socrates and that of Alcibiades, Socrates’ reputed companion. Socrates remained in Athens to stand trial on a capital charge, Alcibiades fled to prevent his trial from taking place; Socrates accepted the judgment of the court in order to show his love for his country, Alcibiades went to the Spartans to advise them how to destroy Athens; Socrates valued the laws more than his own life, Alcibiades so loved his life that he was willing to see his fellow citizens killed or become slaves to improve his own standard of living. In short, the contrasts are so striking that one may well wonder whether Plato is deliberately recalling them. If he is, he is again defending Socrates against the charge of association with Alcibiades.^[3]

When Socrates has finished relating to Crito the imaginary speech of the Laws, he tells his friend that although these arguments seem to him sound, if Crito has different ones, he should urge them on (54D). Crito has nothing to say, and Socrates concludes: “Then give it up, Crito, and let us follow this course, since the god points out the way.” It is not exactly clear what god Socrates has in mind, but he must conceive of a divinity linked to order and logic (logos).^[4] What we see in the dialogue is Socrates sticking to his post even in his last moments, refusing to abandon the better argument even when it would seem to be to his earthly advantage to do so. There may be, as Socrates suggests, other and perhaps better arguments than the ones he has put forth, but if he does not know what they are, he should live in accordance with the best arguments he has. This idea-the importance of living according to reason, according to the best argument-seems to me to be the basic teaching of this drama. And this dramatic teaching does not depend on the validity of what the Laws argue; if one cannot refute them, he is bound to live in accordance with them.^[5] It is possible that the dramatist Plato deliberately made the arguments philosophi­cally unsatisfactory: a life of reason requires acting in accordance with the best arguments actually available, not arguments that are poten­tially better. There would be no intellectual validity in Socrates’ saying, “Yes, Crito, I shall escape, for tomorrow I may come up with an argument better than the argument of the Laws, one which will justify my escape.” Socrates must live with the best argument he has.

Indeed, many readers are uneasy with this dialogue. Those who find the arguments fatuous are hard-pressed to show exactly where the arguments fail. Those who find no fault with the arguments feel that there must be something wrong with arguments that allow an innocent man to be executed.^[6] The play thus communicates a very real tension. In one way, we, Plato’s audience, want Socrates to live, even though we know that he argues against escape; who, after all, reading the Crito, will say, “You’re right, Socrates: so die!”? Yet we also want Socrates to live in accordance with the best arguments. The Crito is not generally reckoned an aporetic dialogue, for it seems to reach a firm conclusion.^[7] I would maintain, however, that Plato has succeeded in making this the most nonaporetic of dialogues aporetic for his readers. The question implicit in the dialogue is how to create a state and laws where men like Socrates won’t have to die.

The focus of the dialogue, from its title on, is Crito. We know that Socrates is going to die and that Crito will be unsuccessful. What we must ask is why Crito goes to see Socrates. There is no evidence that historical accuracy compelled Plato to make Crito Socrates’ visitor.

He could have had a younger man, a Phaedrus or a Theaetetus, perform the embassy. Accepting the dramatic context that Plato pro­ vides, we can imagine the conversation among Socrates’ friends who offered to provide the money for the bribes. They must have delegated Crito to go on this mission, thinking he would be most likely to succeed. But why did Crito accept? If there is anything that strikes the readers of this dialogue, it is the lack of complexity in the arguments. (Indeed, it is their straightforwardness that makes this a common text among first-time readers of Plato.) Crito must have heard them time and time again; thus Socrates is able to refer to them in a short-hand method, “as we have argued before.” Surely Crito knew that Socrates would not automatically accept the idea of escape; surely he knew that Socrates would subject the matter to careful examination. Surely he knew the direction the arguments would take. For all these reasons, apart from any historical accuracy, it was for the sake of drama that Plato made the ambassador Crito, the contemporary old friend. For in the choice of Crito lies the dramatic point of the dialogue: it is indeed a difficult and rare thing to be persuaded by argument. If even Crito urges Socrates to escape, how successful can Socrates’ lifetime of arguments have been? Do they persuade only while they still reverber­ate in one’s ears? When Socrates is gone, will there be nobody who adheres to them? Socrates’ saddest comment in the Crito and perhaps in the whole corpus is that there have been and will always be very few who believe the argument that one should not repay injustice with injustice (49C). Perhaps the play is intended to inspire us to be among those few. It surely shows us how painfully difficult it is to follow reason.

When we reflect on Socrates’ situation—he is, after all, about to be executed-and think how we or our friends have acted in times of emotional stress, no less when there was the possibility of imminent death, we observe starkly the extraordinary quality of the master. Facing death, which more than anything else concentrates one’s atten­tion on life, Socrates will listen only to the best argument. What more inspirational dramatic example could there be?